During this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, I had the blessing and good fortune to attend the Civil War Weekend which took place at Virginia Tech. Hosted by Tech’s Center for Civil War Studies, the conference was attended by about 150 people — of whom I was the youngest. As a second-year graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, on the verge of receiving my master’s degree in American history, I had my heart set on attending this event.
The Civil War has been my great passion ever since my childhood in California and is my field of specialization in the history MA program. Not only did this conference present me with the opportunity to learn more about the war, it also enabled me to meet several prominent Civil War historians whom I had previously seen in documentaries, including Jack Davis, Bud Robertson Jr. and others. I considered this a great honor not to pass up, as I would not only get to hear their insights on Civil War history but have a chance to request their advice on how to pursue a professional career in the field.
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Virginia Tech has offered the Civil War Weekend for 27 years now, and it draws alumni and other history buffs from around the country. The theme for 2018 was “Civil War Places,” and speakers were asked to select sites for their presentations that they considered to be especially significant, or maybe even had a personal connection to. The full list of sites the speakers talked about included (alphabetically) Antietam, Appomattox, Arlington National Cemetery, Belle Isle, Ebenezer’s Creek, Gettysburg, Shiloh and Tredegar. Although I would like to write about all of them, space limitations make that impossible.
The conference actually began with the war’s end: Guest lecturer William C. “Jack” Davis opened the program on Friday night (March 16) with a poignant address titled “Appomattox: A Lasting Stillness.” I went there with a group of friends this January just before my winter break ended. Because I have read a great deal about the surrender at Appomattox and seen it featured in various Civil War films and documentaries, actually visiting the site was truly a profound experience. While the present-day McLean House is a reproduction of the original, it is built with some of the original materials and features some of the original furnishings, and treading the path to the building, walking up its steps and exploring its interior — especially the parlor space where Lee and Grant signed the surrender terms — produced the haunting feeling of actually walking in their footsteps. The visit deepened my appreciation of the enormity of what took place at Appomattox and of the consequences that followed from it.
A fascinating revelation Mr. Davis made about the Appomattox narrative which is not often discussed was that in the war’s final months Lee had been working intermittently with the Confederate government to present terms for an armistice. This was so that the Confederacy would not have to surrender, in the hope that Confederates could return home, existing state governments could stay in place, and that there would be no recriminations or confiscations of property. In his correspondence leading up to the surrender, Lee repeatedly attempted to stall Grant in the hope that he would receive instructions from Jefferson Davis, and he would hint to Grant that he had the power to surrender all Confederate armies as overall Confederate commander.
In the end, speaker Davis stated, neither general got what they wanted, since the meeting at Appomattox did not result in the armistice that Lee had hoped for, nor in the total surrender of all Confederate armies that Grant desired. However, Davis maintained that Appomattox nonetheless had a tremendous impact since it represented what Lincoln hoped for, leading to the one famous photograph in which the president smiled, and set a spiritual agenda and template for following Confederate surrenders with an ennobling ethos.
It would be hard to write about Virginia Tech’s Civil War Weekend without also touching upon the lecture by the esteemed Civil War historian, VT professor and founder of the Civil War Weekend James I. “Bud” Robertson Jr., whose topic was “Shiloh: The Civil War’s First Nightmare.”
Shiloh, Robertson explained, which was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, was the Western theater’s first major engagement, and site of some of the deadliest fighting in U.S. history. But one of the most intriguing facts that Mr. Robertson brought to light was the role that dehydration played in the engagement.
Many of the survivors, he stated, remembered the lack of water; they had been sustained during the action by their adrenaline, but once the fighting ended they were overcome with an overwhelming thirst.
Robertson went on to describe that dehydration was a major factor at Gettysburg as well — there were three streams on the battlefield which the men failed to access, and much of the delay on the part of Confederate General James Longstreet during the second day of battle was due to thirst. Furthermore (and somewhat ironically, perhaps), I learned from Mr. Robertson’s lecture that typhoid — brought about from exposure to contaminated water – was the third biggest killer of the Civil War.
He offered the example of the North Anna River in central Virginia, which became contaminated with the manure of approximately 40,000 horses and mules, causing typhoid fever among the troops exposed to it. Since my studies of the Civil War have typically focused on its battles, causes, leaders and social history, these revelations were very compelling, illustrating the scope of the ignorance relating to health that characterized the period, and the consequences that stemmed from that ignorance.
Listening to the different lectures on the theme of “Civil War Places” resonated with me on a personal level, as I have visited numerous Civil War locations since moving to North Carolina. And I probably would never have had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of scholars like Jack Davis and Bud Robertson if I had stayed in California.
Overall, I found the Civil War Weekend at Virginia Tech to be a very enthralling and informative experience.
As the Center for Civil War Studies says on its website, “There’s always more to learn about the Civil War.”
Without question, this experience has inspired me to continue striving forward in pursuit of my great passion as I approach the end of my graduate school studies.